Well, I have to admit that I'm losing steam here at the end of our whole year of Pinterest recipes. That's partly because we're moving next month and it's hard to focus, and partly because I honestly feel like, after 150+ new recipes, I've made everything I want to make. Ever. BUT, baking is always a good option -- if nothing else, the house smells so good! -- so let's try some fallish quick bread and see what happens. I'm making this recipe gluten free, but I'll post the regular recipe with my changes.

In a bowl, whisk the sweet potato/pumpkin, oil (butter) and applesauce (butter again!), eggs and sugar until well blended.

Mix in the rest of the ingredients except the chips until well blended. Fold in the cinnamon chips. Divide equally into 2 greased loaf pans.

Bake until a knife or toothpick comes out clean. The original recipe says 80 min, the notes say it took 95... I'm setting the timer for 75 and will see how it goes!

RP Servings: 8-10

RATING: 3 stars

This is ALMOST really good. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but it's just... blah somehow. It's fine, and toasted with a little butter it's pretty good. But it's nothing special. If I make it again, I'll try a few things:

Maybe brown sugar or coconut palm sugar, for a little deeper richness in the sweetness

Add cinnamon to the spices, and tweak the spice proportions -- maybe cinnamon, less ginger, more nutmeg?

I love cinnamon chips, but maybe switch out for white chocolate or butterscotch

I don't have time to actually bake very much, but I really like when I get a chance to! Having these extra sweet potatoes was a perfect excuse. Plus, when I said to my co-workers, "hmm, I might make sweet potato muffins," they all swarmed in and yelled and made me promise that I would do it ASAP. No pressure.

​I decided to make muffins, since I would be taking them to work and muffins are easier to share than bread.

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray one 9-by-5-inch loaf pan (what I used), or two 8-by-4-inch loaf pans, or a 10-cup Bundt pan, or a muffin pan with floured cooking spray or grease and flour the pan(s); set aside.

Peel the sweet potatoes and chop them into 1-inch sized chunks. Place chunks in a large, shallow microwave-safe bowl. Add 3 tablespoons water, cover with plasticwrap, and cook on high power for 15 to 17 minutes, or until potatoes are very fork-tender.

Pour off any water. Mash sweet potatoes with a fork. Allow them to cool momentarily so you don't scramble the eggs. (Hah!)

To the sweet potatoes, add the eggs, oil, buttermilk, vanilla and whisk until combined; set aside.

Pour the wet sweet potato mixture over the dry ingredients, and stir to incorporate. Take your time stirring until no stray bits of dry ingredients are visible, folding and scraping the bottom of the bowl with a spatula as necessary because it's very easy to miss dry ingredients hiding at the bottom of the bowl in this batter. Stir and fold with a gentle hand as to not over-mix and over-develop the gluten, which results in tougher bread.

Pour batter into prepared pan(s), smoothing the top lightly with a spatula. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes for a 9x5 pan, or until top is domed, golden, loaf is springy to the touch, and cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Tent pan with foil in the last 15 minutes of cooking if top is browning a bit fast before interior has cooked through. The original blogger estimated that 8x4 loaves will take about 40 to 45 minutes, a Bundt about 1 hour, muffins about 18-20 minutes. I found that 20 minutes was about right for my muffins.

Allow bread to cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. ​

After trying the muffins, I decided to top them with some cinnamon sugar. They were good before, but definitely more on the "bread" side and much less on the "muffin" side, which is fair since this recipe is for bread. My co-workers love some sugar though, so I added it. I think that the cinnamon sugar bumped it up nicely anyway.

RP Servings: 24Stars: 3.5. They were pretty good, but needed some "oomph." It was a nice way to use some extra sweet potatoes, and my co-workers liked them, but they weren't falling over themselves to eat more.

I looked at several banana bread recipes on Pinterest and found one that had the ingredients I had on hand. (I did NOT look for a gluten free recipe - I do better making my own GF versions!!) And as an added bonus, it's a "BEST BANANA BREAD I'VE EVER HAD" recipe.

Mash the bananas. Add the bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla to the mixer and mix until combined. Add the flour and mix just until blended.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time and mix in. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Grease your loaf pan with cooking spray. I used butter flavored. You can use a regular pan for a thinner bread, which is recommended for the gluten free option - otherwise it will be too dense. (You could also make muffins.)

Bake at 350 degrees for at least 1 hour for either the loaf or pan. (Start testing it at about 45 min.) It's done when a toothpick comes out clean. Turn out immediately onto a rack to cool.

RP Servings: 10-12

RATINGS: 4 starsThis is really good! The edges are nice and crispy and in good proportion to the sweet bread. The flavor is good, too! I would probably reduce the sugar a bit, but my husband loved it just how it is. It will be great toasted with a little butter in the morning!

I love banana bread! For decades (yikes!), I've used the recipe of an old Florida friend, who makes hers when she can with lady finger bananas from her yard. Although I've saved bananas to try to make a GF version of it several times since I went gluten free a year ago, I haven't done it yet. My husband usually sees the really ripe (can we say "yucky"?) bananas, and says, "You're not going to use these, right?" And then we throw them away.

So when I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I thought, "AHA! Someone's already done it for me!" And pinned it. Awhile ago. Like... almost a year. And I still haven't made it. So of course I decided to make it now, right at the beginning of January when everyone in my house (including me) is eating healthy. 'Cause... it seemed like a good idea at the time. HOWEVER, if you check out the recipe ingredients, you'll see that this really is a pretty healthy version of banana bread - as long as no one eats half of it, which has happened in the past by people who shall remain nameless. *cough*Chuck*cough*

It has a LONG ingredient list, and if you don't already have various gluten free flours in your pantry, this is going to be pretty expensive. But if you DO have these flours, you probably have everything else, or a reasonable substitution.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Assemble the ingredient:

3 medium ripe bananas (~1.5 cups)

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 egg

3 Tbsp grape seed or coconut oil, melted

1/4 cup organic cane sugar (I just used regular sugar, because that's what I have)

Mash the bananas, then add all the ingredients through milk. She says to whisk it, but it mixes up just fine with a fork. I had to smash some bigger chunks of banana that had escaped me.

Add the flours and oats. I used this almond FLOUR, rather than almond meal as specified in the recipe. I actually have almond meal, but I don't love it. It's quite heavy, and I made the executive decision to sub in the super fine flour. So technically, I'm not exactly making the recipe, I guess... But I feel like the bread will be a belly bomb with that much almond meal, and if I'm baking, I want to enjoy the end result!

I don't have good luck with lining things with parchment paper, so I sprayed my loaf pan with non-stick spray. I tasted the batter to see if I needed more honey - I added 2 tbsp of the "2-3" suggested - and thought the sweetness was fine. It did have a little bit of a weird taste, but I guess you shouldn't be eating raw batter anyway!

The bread took an hour and 23 minutes to cook. We abided by the author's suggestion to let it cool completely - without gluten, things do tend to fall apart, so it seemed like good advice!

RP Servings: 12+ as it is written. Maybe less with some tweaks!

RATING: 2 1/4 starsMy son and I both said 2 stars, my husband said 3. The flavor is good, although it definitely needs more banana. But it is DRY. With butter it was ok, but... DRY. And that was with almond flour. If I'd used almond meal, it might have been inedible. We all did agree that it has the potential to be a 4+ star bread, though, with some tweaks. Next time I'll add that 4th banana and probably another egg. It's definitely worth playing around with!

UPDATE from the next day: Still dry. BUT, toasted, with butter and a tad of honey, it's pretty good. Remember that gluten free flours tend to get gritty after a couple of days, so you won't want a lot of this lingering around. You could bake it in smaller load pans, wrap well, and freeze!

UPDATE TODAY, 2 days after baking: It's falling apart, but the flavor is still good and it's not gritty. I'm guessing that's because the majority of the dry ingredients are oats and almond flour, rather than the all-purpose. But we won't eat it all... And you do have to toast and add at least one of butter or honey.

Author

Jennings & Ryan are mother/daughter, and love to cook. And look at Pinterest. So we thought...Why not? At least one Pinterest recipe, with photos and a review, every day for a year. What could go wrong?